EVENT LOG: A DANGEROUS DELUGE-ION PT. 2

[asgardmods]

Who: EVERYONE
What: the second part of A Dangerous Deluge-ion
When: June 22
Where: both inside Asgard, and in the wilderness surrounding the city
Rating: G - PG-13, please take anything else to a private log!

sound the alarms

Early morning on this day is surprisingly peaceful, the shower of junk from the previous days come to a complete stop. But by the time the sun just barely begins to peek over the horizon, that silence is broken by a deep, thunderous rumbling. It isn't coming from the sky - it's coming from the ground. Your character might wake up to what sounds like boulders smashing together, to what feels like an earthquake rattling the city at its core. Even if they manage to sleep through the tremors into the silence that returns a few minutes later, all will be able to hear the moment the ground rips open with a violent, unnatural tearing.

At that moment, a mighty roar shakes the trees as the Red Death awakens from beneath the earth. Its massive body unfurls, cracking through trees and even colossal vines that seem to cross over its form, and it rears its head above the treeline with a fearsome roar that shakes the earth once again. Almost immediately, alarm bells begin ringing throughout the city as the gods evacuate everyone to their castle. The natives immediately go into a panic, and the streets are flooded with frantic desperate people seeking out safety.

the battle is on!

Heimdall immediately begins gathering those willing to fight, and a small company of natives rally together behind their god. Honir leads the charge forward by horseback, welcoming any that can ride to travel with him as he carves a path through the wilderness to their target. There are only "medieval" weapons available, and the beast is a few miles away through thick flora that writhes with wild magic. With the help of some of your more tactical Wanderers, a rough battle plan is formed, and away we go into the madness.



The dragon is massive, even the tallest among you barely rising above its feet, and it breathes fire and fury into the area surrounding it. The trees burn rapidly, flames spreading into the canopy and scorching the ground. Each time it takes a step, deep tremors run through the earth and shake everything nearby. This is not a safe place to be, but stopping this creature is paramount. Fight hard and stay alive, if you can manage it.

a sudden turn

While many of you seem to be getting good, solid hits in, the Red Death shows no sign of slowing. Some of your efforts manage to lightly damage one of its wings and a couple of its eyes - but it has plenty to spare, and it doesn't need much to be able to wreak havoc. Lacking any plans to keep it grounded, the Red Death takes to the air in a frightening blast of wind that might bowl over those not strong enough to keep their footing. Its monstrous shadow casts the battleground into sudden darkness as it rises above the tree line and takes note of the nearby city. With a few thunderous flaps of its wings - the damaged one flagging, but only just so - it heads in that direction, and doesn't even need to be directly upon it to breathe another devastating blast of fire down into Asgard itself.

Those at the castle can watch as Mimir and Odin, who remained outside on the castle grounds while Frigg and Sigyn hurried everyone indoors, sweep their arms in an identical motion. Indecipherable runes appear in the air, glowing gold and dusky purple, and an invisible dome shields the castle from harm as the Red Death's fiery breath curves around it, creating a terrifying cascade of red-hot flames that never manage to breach the barrier. The same can't be said for the rest of the city, though, and half of Njord district is scorched in the blast. Any that hadn't managed to reach the safety of the castle will find themselves surrounded by a city on fire, some buildings collapsing while wildlife burns.

the grand finale

Before the Red Death can unleash another wave of destruction, there's a faint vibration in the air at the edge of the city, not far from where the dragon hovers above. With a flash of rouge colored light, every Wanderer and native that journeyed into the wilderness to face the dragon appears all at once. Honir sags from the strain, but Heimdall is there to rally everyone to battle one last time. This beast must die before further harm comes to their city.

As if to signal the start of this second and final fray, a singular crack of lightning - larger than many of you have ever seen, with a thunderous clap that is comparable to the grinding of stone from earlier - strikes the already damaged wing. The Red Death howls a terrifying roar, but can no longer sustain the weight of its massive body with one good wing. It falls back to the earth, giving you greater access to it than you might've had earlier now that the fight is out of the mystical wilderness. Stand together and finish this foul dragon once and for all!

in the aftermath

Immediately after it is deemed safe to do so, the city erupts into action as everyone tries to assess the damage done. Tyr leads efforts to douse the fires raging across buildings and trees and into the nearby wilderness as well. The medical crew begins tending to wounds and seeking out anyone that might not have made it to the castle before the destruction began. Houses will have to be rebuilt. Njord's district is halfway in ruin. Deep into the wilderness, the distant flickering of red light signals the fires still burning where the Red Death initially emerged. There is stark evidence all around to display the inexplicable disaster that happened today.

But the city survived, along with almost all of its inhabitants. There is a somber note that lingers in the air, certainly, but there is also rejoicing in the triumph of Asgard and its Wanderers that rallied together to save the day. The gods, while largely distracted with the task of figuring out how the creature even manifested here, offer their gratitude to their guests for defeating it. The natives look upon with a new kind of reverence, both awe-inspired and bewildered that they actually succeeded. It will take time to rebuild and recover from this - but they will have time enough to do so, now that they are safe from harm's way.

harvesting the body

After the dragon is felled, its immense corpse towers over everyone that stands beneath it - but that won't stop the most intrepid of scavengers from looking for ways to make use of such a horrible and magnificent creature. As your characters start the task of whittling down what you can reach of its body, some of the natives offer their assistance out of gratitude for saving their lives, which helps you reach greater success in your attempts. (I'll be responding to each of your comments eventually to let you know exactly what you manage to get away with, but remember that this is a colossal dragon with heavy armor and thick hide that lives in a volcano and smashes through mountains like paper. Limited success is in its very nature.)

These efforts continue well past the afternoon and into dusk, but once the sun has completely disappeared behind the horizon, something strange happens: the body begins to glow. Every inch of its hide begins to emit a faint golden light that grows in intensity over the next few seconds, and then it begins to dissipate into glowing flecks of dust from one side to the other. The process is slow, taking several minutes to get through the entirety of this massive creature, but it eventually leaves what looks like an enormous cloud of glittering swirls of light. If you touch the dust, it feels warm and clings to any exposed skin; it even seems to start the process of healing any open wounds it comes into contact with.

The light only lingers for roughly a minute, however. Almost as though a gust of wind strikes it, or even resembling the strange sucking motion of a vacuum pulling it in, every golden particle is drawn into the surrounding wilderness. Some of the burnt husks of trees and bushes rapidly regrow into bright and healthy green, while deeper in, a strange creaking and groaning can be heard as the forest seems to puff up from the influx of magic. The Red Death, it seems, is no more.

[ OOC NOTE: Okay, friends! Here is our last part of the A Dangerous Deluge-ion event! This one was written around what kind of discussion happened on the event post, and there are a few things of note:

• Many of you contributed medical aid and supply efforts, which means you successfully managed to get most everyone to safety, or were able to treat enough wounds to prevent significant loss of life.
• A handful of you contributed some tactical advice, which enabled you to get some key shots in on a few of the dragon's weak spots. However, only a couple of you discussed how to damage the wings, and no one mentioned keeping it grounded, which allowed the dragon to reach the city very briefly.
• Most of you contributed combat efforts, which resulted in a sizable amount of damage in the initial fray that prevented it from flying straight into the city to obliterate it. Between Hiccup's insight, those of you that provided some on-the-ground battle tactics, and the sheer number of you that jumped into the fight, you were successful in ultimately bringing the Red Death to its demise.
• I rolled a RNG to see which district in the city was affected by the fire breath, and it landed on Njord. Many of his natives' houses have been destroyed, along with Skipta Mál, the only restaurant in Asgard that happened to be storing all of the alcohol that existed within the city. :')

This was a tough fight! The Red Death is no empty threat, and its immense size/defensive capabilities meant this was going to be difficult to defeat without any damage/casualties, especially given that you are all canon power nerfed and starting at first level. You did some awesome plotting on the post though, and it was really fun getting to see what kind of ideas everyone brought to the table!

I tried to keep NPC involvement to a minimum so that the success/failure of this event leaned more heavily on PC contributions, but please let me know if you think they should be more actively involved or if they could take a further step backwards. It's hard to balance the power dynamic of this when there are a lot of things the gods are capable of - and a lot of things they might have been capable of before building Asgard, but can no longer do - that the PCs just can't really keep up with. But this game is about you, not us, so my goal is to write more of your story than And Then the Gods Save the Day. This was our very first plot event, so your feedback will help me determine how to run events like these in the future! Please don't hesitate to hit me up with your thoughts, either on the mod contact page or on discord!

As for the Mystery Hole, there will be a separate log for the excursion through the ruined landscape of Asgard's territory to reach it on another day. For now, it's inaccessible due to the wild tenacity of the flora, which has swelled with the amount of life magic that was dispersed in this fight. Y'all are gonna get to fight some weird jungle shit to get down there, it'll be fun.

Thank you so much, everyone! Welcome to Asgard, I hope you enjoyed immediately destroying it thx Hiccup. ]